Man suspected in 150 burglaries across 4 N.J. counties

WEST ORANGE — He works under the cover of night, frequenting Chinese restaurants, pizzerias and beauty salons.

He usually gets in by breaking a glass front door.

He’s industrious, too, believed to have been at his task for at least three years and leaving his mark in about 150 establishments in Bergen, Passaic, Union and Essex counties.

So far, police have been unable to stop him.

One of his last known jobs was on Main Street in West Orange on Nov. 18. His M.O. early that Sunday morning was similar to the one police say he’s used at those dozens of other small businesses: He kicked in the bottom of the glass front door at Number One Chinese Kitchen and crawled through the opening.

Once inside, surveillance video shows him sitting at a desk, peering and probing intently around a table. He bends down off the chair, finds a large cleaver and pries loose a cash box. He takes it with him, slipping out of the restaurant the same way he came in.

That cash box turned out to be empty, township police said. But the burglar’s collective payoff would otherwise seem to be lucrative enough.

"No one seems to know who he is," West Orange police Detective Ed Diaz said today.

Most of the burglaries have taken place early on Sunday mornings, before dawn, according to the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office, which has distributed an alert.

"He’s just going for the cash register," Diaz said.

Police describe the man as black, in his mid 30s to early 40s, anywhere from 5 feet, 8 inches to 6 feet tall, with a medium to heavy build and a beard.

Video shows him wearing light jeans, a sweatshirt and sneakers and a winter hat. He sometimes wears gloves, the prosecutor’s alert says. He’s never been seen to exit or enter a car.

The suspect’s transgressions appear to date back nearly three years, when a Chinese restaurant on Millburn Avenue was similarly burglarized.

Township detectives compared images in the West Orange video to those taken on Dec. 30, 2009, and are nearly convinced the same man is pictured in both, Laverty said.

Video: Surveillance video of West Orange burglaryIn this video released by the Township of West Orange a man can be seen burglarizing a Main Street restaurant in West Orange. Investigators believe the suspect is involved in approximately 150 other burglaries over a two-year span throughout the state.

Businesses in small-town strip malls, such as bakeries, bagel shops, delis and dry cleaners have also been victimized, the prosecutor’s alert says.

Early on St. Patrick’s Day this year, six Fairfield businesses were burglarized, including five within steps of each other, Deputy Police Chief Anthony Manna said.

Again a resemblance, both to man and method, bore out.

In the first job, sometime after midnight that Saturday, the man used a center-punch against a glass pane on the front door of a Hollywood Avenue nail salon to get inside.

After burglarizing that business, the only one hit that night with surveillance equipment, he absconded to a nearby strip mall.

"He did five stores there and basically did the same thing," Manna said. "He did get cash."

Manna said detectives are part of a mufti-jurisdictional investigation, now being helped by video.

Montclair police said the man pictured in the West Orange video looks a lot like the person who was videotaped Nov. 17 breaking into a Montclair home being renovated, a spokesman for that township’s police department said.

"There is a huge resemblance," Lt. Angel Roman said today. "From what we’re looking at, it definitely looks like him."

Anyone with information on a possible suspect is asked to contact West Orange police at (973) 325-4020 or via email at cid@westorange.org; or the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office’s special investigation squad at (201) 226-5655 or (201) 226-5762.